a) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument and more particularly to an electronic musical instrument adapted for generating parameters for controlling the musical sounds of a rubbed string instrument or a wind instrument.
b) Description of the Related Art
Most of the real time performance manipulators of the electronic musical instruments have been made of keyboards. A keyboard has a plurality of keys corresponding to the respective tone pitches. When a key in the keyboard is depressed, an associated key switch is closed (made) to generate a pitch signal corresponding to the tone pitch assigned to the depressed key.
In the case of a two-make switch, the first and the second key switches are closed (made) successively at a speed corresponding to the key depressing speed. Upon the make actions of the two switches, a tone pitch signal corresponding to the depressed key and a touch signal corresponding to the speed of the key depressing action derived from the make time difference between the first and the second key switch makings are generated. Those electronic musical instruments equipped with such keyboard are adapted to simulate the musical sounds of the keyboard instruments such as the piano and the organ.
Other electronic musical instruments include guitar synthesizer, wind controller, etc. The guitar synthesizer is adapted to simulate the musical sounds of the guitar. The wind controller is adapted to simulate the musical sounds of the wind instruments.
A rubbed string instrument such as violin changes the expression of the musical sound in a variety of ways, based on the speed of the string rubbing bow and the pressure of the string pressing bow.
When the musical sound of such a rubbed string instrument is to be simulated by an electronic musical instrument, roughly two ways can be thought of.
One is the method in which such basic performance manipulators of a rubbed string instrument as bow, string and fingerboard are directly used and, for example, the vibration of a string is transformed into an electric signal and treated electronically. The other is the method in which, without using bow, string and fingerboard, etc. of the natural rubbed string instrument, a performance manipulator or manipulators such as a keyboard, different from those of the natural rubbed string instrument, are used as the basic performance manipulators and a musical sound is simulated based on the performance of such manipulators.
When the bow, the string and the fingerboard similar to those of the natural musical instrument are used as the performance manipulators to cause actual vibrations of a string according to the former method, a rubbed string electronic musical instruments capable of achieving performance rich in expression can be realized. However, the performance using the performance manipulators similar to those of the natural rubbed string instrument requires techniques of a high grade, and long term exercise for its mastering. Therefore, those who are not well-trained in performance techniques cannot enjoy the performance of the rubbed string instrument.
According to the latter method, for example, the harmonies construction of the basic tone color of the violin are preliminarily studied to enable electronic synthesis of the basic musical sound. Then, the sounds of the violin, etc. are generated in response to the keyboard manipulation. Whereas the sound of the violin changes its musical expression in a variety of ways according to its bow speed, bow pressure, etc. while the bow is contacting the string, keyboard input has no function for giving such expressions. Thus, the performance is apt to become monotonic and poor in expression.
In the performance of the violin, there are employed such performances as arco (arcato) performance in which the bow rubs the string, and such specific performances as pizzicato performance in which the string is picked by a finger without using a bow. Those musical sounds generated by these performances have largely different natures.
Also in the performance of the guitar which is another kind of a string musical instrument, there are employed such specific performances as apoyando performance in which the finger which has picked a string is abutted to the next string, harmonics performance in which a string is picked while lightly touching a node for generating a harmonic sound to generate harmonic sounds, and legado performance in which performance is done by tapping the string only with the lefthand to generate a musical sound, etc. as well as the ordinary al aire performance in which the finger which has picked up a string is kept in space.
For generating such different musical sounds by the different performance modes in an electronic musical instrument, it is necessary to give different musical sound controlling information.
For example, in the arco performance of the violin, information necessary for generating a sustaining tone rich in expression includes the bow speed and the bow pressure. In the pizzicato performance, no sustaining sound is necessary and it is enough if an instantly decaying sound can be well controlled. Therefore, it will be possible to simulate the sounds of the pizzicato performance when there is given information expressing the rapid actions, even when there is almost no sustaining information.
In this way, the information required for controlling the musical sound also changes depending on the performance. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Sho. 63-40199 discloses a wind instrument which generates the musical sound in correspondence to the breath pressure, and the embouchure (Ansatz, representing the form of the lips, the lower facial muscles and the structure of jaws and teeth). In such wind instrument, the information required for controlling the musical sound differs depending on the performance such as ordinary (long tone) performance, tonguing performance, etc.
As is described above, according to the conventional technique, the kinds of the controlling information which the keyboard type electronic musical instrument can generate are few, and are not sufficient for the performance of the rubbed string instruments, etc. The guitar synthesizer and the wind controller are adapted for the performances of the guitar and the wind instrument, but have limitations for achieving performance of other kinds of instruments.